NHL still can’t get it right

As usual, the Stanley Cup playoffs are providing some compelling games and riveting action . . . for fans who can actually find the games. That’s not easy.

The latest black mark for the NHL came Saturday afternoon, when NBC showed Game 5 of the Buffalo-Ottawa series. The game, as many in the postseason do, went to overtime.

NBC, however, did not.

With its Preakness coverage window approaching, the network dished off the Versus, the NHL’s cable broadcaster that is so obscure that the league’s Web site offers a “Versus locator” to help fans find the channel on their cable or satellite systems.

Ottawa scored 9:32 into overtime — or about a hour before the Preakness post time — to advance to the NHL finals. Probably half the fans who were watching regulation on NBC spent that time trying to find Versus.

The Versus experiment has been a disaster. (What kind of a network calls itself Versus? Sounds like a long poem.) The NHL should have taken less money and gone back to ESPN. The ratings have gone south faster than the New Jersey Devils.

The production has been average, at best. The announcing crews are OK (except for Mike Emrick, who is outstanding), but nothing to excite the audience. The cameras seem to follow the puck successfully, but as soon as the whistle blows, the production crew focuses on stuff away from the ice. If there’s a post-whistle skirmish on the ice, viewers are seeing fans or some replay from three weeks ago.

I remember a first-round game between the Sabres and Islanders. I had both the MSG and Versus feeds rolling. There was a whistle, and one of the Islanders knocked one of the Sabres to the ice and was called for a penalty. MSG showed it all. Versus was running replays from the first period and missed the whole thing.

Versus, like NBC, gets unprecdented access, but it’s not always worthwhile. The cable network promotes a feature called “Mic’d Up,” in which a player wears a microphone to give us conversation we wouldn’t hear normally. Here’s a hint to the producers: They never say anything! Don’t waste the air time.